The move is in part an attempt to leverage funding, including federal money, that could help pay for the garage — a key piece of the convention center project.

“It’s an agreement that we’re going to work together to get the funding to do this,” said Gavin Donohue, chairman of the convention center authority. “You can’t build a convention center without a parking garage.”

The convention center (rendering below) is planned for the southern edge of downtown, in an area dominated by surface parking lots. The convention center is seen as a way to rejuvenate that area — and the rest of downtown.

Convention center plans were announced in 2006. But by last year, costs had ballooned to $400 million, leading many to give the project up for dead.

So to cut expenses, authority officials decided to separate hotel and parking garage construction from the building of the main convention center, cutting about $180 million from the overall plan.

Today’s announcement is part of that strategy.

The parking garage/bus station would be built on Broadway, at the site that includes the E-Comm Center (above photo). The authority paid $5.9 million for that land earlier this year.

CDTA spokeswoman Margo Janack said the station could also serve as centralized transfer station and waiting area for the authority’s buses and riders. She compared the project to the Rensselaer Rail Station, which CDTA owns and operates.

“The big thing for us is that we help improve the transit experience downtown,” she said.

For god sakes this thing is taking forever to build! Now is the time to build this thing already down town is on the skids with a number of projects on hold or abandoned altogether. We need this thing to go up to help jump start the downtown area again!